Man City players are rattling through Pep Guardiola bingo at Euro 2024
We are only two rounds of group games in at the European Championship but the narratives have quickly sprung up.
Club football has bled into the space for international football in the calendar and even in the flagship tournaments it has been impossible to stop the parallels. When Wayne Rooney was looking for a comparison point for England, for instance, he found Manchester City - just not any of the bits that have made Pep Guardiola's side serial winners of the Premier League.
It didn't take much football in Germany for conclusions to be made about City's players: they just aren't the same without Guardiola. Phil Foden drew criticism in England's first game, Kevin De Bruyne and Jeremy Doku couldn't stop Belgium losing to Slovakia and Bernardo Silva and Ruben Dias were part of a lethargic Portugal side who had to come from behind to beat Ccezhia, meaning of course that City's players can't perform without the best manager in the world.
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There's certainly something to be said for City being the perfect place for the specific players that they buy to thrive. It is hard to think of a player who left the first-team in the Guardiola era and has gone on to better things, and it would make sense that it is harder to have success when not on the same pitch as similar talents.
But that cannot be used as an excuse and, given another 90 minutes, City players have not tried to use it as one. De Bruyne and Silva picked up man-of-the-match awards after goals against Romania and Turkey respectively while Manu Akanji also received it for his performance in Switzerland's draw